Thank you, Senator Feingold!

Extension of Patriot Act Faces Threat of Filibuster

From the New York Times:

"WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - A tentative deal to extend the government's antiterrorism powers under the law known as the USA Patriot Act appeared in some jeopardy Thursday, as Senate Democrats threatened to mount a filibuster in an effort to block the legislation."

""This is worth the fight," Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who serves on the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview."

""I've cleared my schedule right up to Thanksgiving," Mr. Feingold said, adding that he was making plans to read aloud from the Bill of Rights as part of a filibuster if necessary."

more...

Thank you to you Democrats who are finally standing up. After almost five years of being railroaded by a Republican House, Senate, and White House, the only bipartisanship that interests me right now is this kind.

Patriot Act Update

by Senator Russ Feingold (via Daily Kos)

"I'm pleased to announce that early this afternoon, Senate leaders threw in the towel on their plan to jam a Patriot Act reauthorization bill through the Senate before Thanksgiving. Bipartisan resistance to the tentative agreement reached by conference committee Republicans stopped them in their tracks. We will come back in December and have a real debate on the Patriot Act, and in the meantime, we can keep up pressure on the conferees to move closer to the unanimously supported Senate bill from this summer. "

"Your support in this effort was crucial. In the past 36 hours, I've had conversations with dozens of Senators that led me to believe that we would have won a vote to block the bill if it had come up. They were obviously hearing from back home that there was no need to act in haste."

more...

The Democrats are showing some backbone and it's finally beginning to look like there are two parties in Congress again. Please, no more Republican-lite Democrats!

Support The Truth

2085

Happy Birthday, Guv!

Governor Dean attends the grassroots $393,000-and-counting
luncheon with over 7,500 supporters at Burlington HQ.
(He's getting ready to blog in this photo.)
Note his $3-a-plate turkey sandwich lunch.
Photo by John Pettitt.

"What I want to know... is why in the world the Democratic party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq?"

"What I want to know... is why are Democratic party leaders supporting tax cuts? The question is not how big the tax cut should be, the question should be: can we afford a tax cut at all with the largest deficit in the history of this country?"


"What I want to know... is why we're fighting in Congress about the Patient's Bill of Rights when the Democratic party ought to be standing up for health care for every single American man, woman, and child in this country?"

"What I want to know... is why our folks are voting for the president's No Child Left Behind bill that leaves every child behind, every teacher behind, every school board behind, and every property tax payer behind?"

"I'm Howard Dean and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party."

Read the rest of Howard Dean's Address to the Democratic National Committee Winter Meeting Washington, D.C. (February 21, 2003). (Transcript courtesy of crocuta.net)

Read and listen to other Dean speeches.

Visit the unofficial archive of Dean for America's fundraising bats.

Take a look at Dean supporters.

Ignore Your Rights

and they'll go away.

After 9/11, the world seemed to come together to support a grieving nation, a nation that trusted its President to keep it safe. Instead, the Bush Administration squandered much of the good will of other nations, and used the fear of our citizens to drastically curtail our civil liberties.


By playing on our fears, Congress pushed through the "Patriot Act" which dramatically limited the legal protections previously afforded to our citizens.

The government now has expanded arrest powers, more leeway to monitor our communications, and to do such things as track the books we read from libraries and bookstores. Suspicion alone seems to be enough to lock away people without hearings or adjudication. As Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) warns of the attempts to expand the limits of the Patriot Act, he writes:

"When Congress passed the Patriot Act immediately following 9/11, we warned that the definition of terrorism was so broad that it could sweep in benign groups who were simply using tools of civil disobedience to make a political point, or even unions engaged in picketing. The Republicans told us not to worry, that the Department could be trusted not to abuse their authority."

"Recent reports indicate that we do, indeed, need to worry about the conduct of the Department of Justice under this Act. Recently, the ACLU iscovered, through the Freedom of Information Act, that the FBI had designated a Michigan-based peace group and affirmative action advocacy organization had been labeled "terrorist organizations."

Speaking out has somehow become "unpatriotic" and dissenters, when tolerated at all, are herded into "Free Speech Zones." Prior to that, the assumption had been that free speech was constitutionally protected within our nation's borders, not just the borders of the designated fenced-in areas.

Those who are trying to diminish our rights rely on our fear about speaking out, our failure to pay attention, or our reluctance to ask questions. It is our duty as citizens to make sure that our country does the right thing at all times, and to speak out when our leaders don't.

Despite assertions to the contrary, dissent is patriotic.

Be the Change

Human beings have accomplished some amazing things. What more could we do if we spent our energy and resources on creating, rather than destroying?



We need to be thinking "outside the box." If there ever was a time to try something new, this seems to be it.


What do you want the world to be like? Are you working toward that vision?

Veep Throat

Who outed Valerie Plame? I'm pretty sure it has something to do with Veep Throat.

Scraping Off W

Is it just here in my red state, or is anyone else noticing a lot fewer "W" stickers on SUV bumpers? During his first term, I offered a blood-soaked version, which sadly still fits the circumstances.

Of course, I never expected to have to update the sticker after the 2004 election. I just naturally assumed that the worst president ever was going to serve one term like his father.

Speak Up

even if your voice shakes...

God's President

If George W. Bush's Religious-Right base was convinced that God wanted him to win the election, shouldn't they also have assumed that God wanted Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court?



Shouldn't all those conservative naysayers have put aside their whining and just asked one simple question?




What would Dubya Do?

Feminist Is Not A Dirty Word

Feminist is not a dirty word.
(crossposted at maTREEarchy)

When women are feminists, they are often labeled as lesbians

or dykes

which aren't dirty words either. Although some feminists are lesbians and some lesbians embrace the "dyke" label, many feminists are heterosexual, some lesbians don't like the word "dyke" and some lesbians aren't even feminists. Some men are also feminists.

Labeling feminists as lesbians and dykes is intended to insult them or to place them into neat little categories so that some people don't have to try to understand or deal with the concept of equality for women. It is intended to divide and conquer, and, in the past, the tactic has often been successful in dividing groups of women who are working for equality. Hopefully, that tactic won't work much longer.

Another tactic is to claim that feminism is no longer necessary, that women already enjoy equal rights, and that being a feminist is something your grandma did.

Anyone paying attention to the world today knows this isn't true.

"Herstorically" some women ARE better off today, however many are NOT.

A long time ago, the stage was set to blame women for all the world's misery.

And in case that early message wasn't clear enough, the theme has been constantly reinforced through the ages.

In the United States, there has been a lot of progress through the years. Women enjoy the right to vote, when the votes are counted properly. Title IX breathed some life into women's sports, although there is now an assault on that legislation.

Some of those troops we're supporting with yellow ribbons are women, though some in Congress have recently attempted to limit women's combat roles. They know that it's hard to deny other rights to women when women share the burden of defending our country.

One issue that tends to divide every group of women is the subject of abortion. Some women value life at all its stages. They are consistent in their opposition to abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, and war.

Other women believe that a woman won't ever achieve equality if she can't control her own body. They believe that whether they reproduce is their decision, in consultation with a doctor.

Until sex education is universal, contraceptive methods are foolproof, and childbirth is risk-free, abortion will be around, whether it is legal or not. Many people have a goal for safe and legal abortions to be available and rarely necessary.

With a "Pro-Life" president in office, the numbers of abortions have actually increased. I also couldn't help but notice the lack of female presence during the signing of the Bush "partial-birth" abortion bill.

These men could always try a different tactic to take matters into their own hands.

Feminists will never be a homogenous group, but that's part of the charm. From healthy debates come good compromises.

For instance, feminists working for peace probably aren't all that concerned about whether women are allowed to participate in combat.

Feminism is mostly about women realizing that they are autonomous beings, complete with or without a man,

Women are every bit as capable of doing what men do. Some feminists believe in a more militant in-your-face type of activism, others are more quietly running boardrooms and statehouses.

In any case, the job isn't complete, and we aren't going away.